AIGLX and the rise of the composite desktop

GRAPHIC HORIZONS

Red Hat developers have been working on an alternative to Xgl, which they have dubbed AIGLX. AIGLX promises hardware accelerated desktop effects, while at the same time facilitating integration with the Xorg infrastructure. The Fedora Rendering Project describes AIGLX as “a project that aims to enable GL-accelerated effects on the standard desktop. They add, “We have a lightly modified X server (that includes a couple of extensions), an updated Mesa package that adds some new protocol support, and a version of Metacity with a composite manager. The end result is that you can use GL effects on your desktop with very few changes, you can turn it on and off at will, and you don’t have to replace your X server in the process.”